


The Grave of James Buchanan Barnes

by Cymbidia



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Hurt Bucky Barnes, M/M, Memory Loss, Post CATWS, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 20:22:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3950452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cymbidia/pseuds/Cymbidia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His is a ghost that lingers.</p><p>(Sometimes for days and days all the noise you make is the mechanical whirring of your arm as you clench your fist and struggle to not move and not think and keep breathing. You are allowed to breathe.</p><p>You do not want to continue breathing, what you want is to scream, and to die, and to be put back in the ice.)</p><p> </p><p>post-CATWS Bucky recovery fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Grave of James Buchanan Barnes

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the genre of bucky recovery fics.
> 
> I'm very taken with the idea that Bucky doesn't remember all of it, and has trouble with the expectations people have of who he is and who they (Steve) want him to be.
> 
> not beta'ed

1.  
You are not James Buchanan Barnes.  
“Put me back in,” you want to say, to beg, to scream. Steve Rogers does not put you back in the ice.  
The nostalgia of a war hero bites at you, in every conversation with every stranger. Who was Sergeant Barnes? You are not Sergeant Barnes.  
Do you even know if you are a person? Are you even alive?  
Sometimes for days and days all the noise you make is the mechanical whirring of your arm as you clench your fist and struggle to not move and not think and keep breathing. You are allowed to breathe.

You do not want to continue breathing, what you want is to scream, and to die, and to be put back in the ice.

 

2.  
You wake up, having dreamt of Bucky Barnes and your Stevie, sitting at a bar. You open your eyes.  
You throw the history book on your nightstand across the room. The book had a make-believe past but there were photos in the centre of the book, the paper glossy unlike the other yellowed pages of academic lies. You opened your eyes and you sat up and you saw the pictures of James Buchanan Barnes with Steve Rogers, and you picked the book up and you threw it across the room and the book bounced off the reinforced glass window and landed on the floor with a thump. The book falls splayed open, glossy white pages crumpled.  
Steve Rogers hears the noise, and he enters your room, and he asks Bucky Barnes is he is okay, but you are not James Buchanan Barnes, so you do not answer.  
~~(You resent.)~~

 

3.  
You spend your time alone, mostly. Steve Rogers hovers, but you often ignore him, and he is often away on missions. You are not allowed on missions, or into environments that are not tightly controlled and carefully surveilled.  
You sometimes want to beg for someone to take you out from inside your head and to put someone (something) else in, even if they were orders to hurt and maim and kill.  
You are what you have been made to be, and it is difficult to change.  
You try, but it is difficult.  
You wake up, and you turn on the television, and for house and hours you will sit and watch documentaries about animals and plants, and you will not see any human faces, and you will not think of how you would hurt, and your arm does not click and whirr and your heartbeat does not shift and it’s the closest you can ever get to being back in the ice.

There are things in the house from Before. Chipped cups and old paperbacks and battered furniture. Some of these items you remember, some you do not. Some of these items you investigate, others you ignore. Some of these things belonged to Steve Rogers, some of them belonged to James Buchanan Barnes.  
There are three occupants in the house. Steve Rogers, James Buchanan Barnes, and you, whoever you are. His ghost lingers, but you are not sure if that ghost is you.

 

4.  
Natasha Romanov is not a person you feel safe around, but she is a person you trust. She carries a scar that you gave her, when you were the Soldier.  
It was you, and not the other man, who marked her, so you are grateful for that mark, even as you are sorry for it.  
She is foreign — Russian — so not so foreign, really.  
She was not raised on glorious tales about Bucky Barnes the war hero.  
She was raised on horror stories (lessons) about the Winter Soldier.  
You are more one than the other, but you cannot figure out which.

Whenever she is in New York, she invites you each Saturday to brunch, It is the only appointment you have never failed in keeping.

You are at a restaurant, and she is talking to you.  
She asks you a question.  
You know that she brings more weapons to brunch than she does to the majority of her missions. She does not need most of them, but she knows it makes you feel better.  
You know that she knows that you are not the other man.  
You give her your honest reply.

 

5.  
Steve Rogers wants to bake a cherry pie, so he has gone to shop for the ingredients.  
“You used to love cherry pie, Bucky.” he tells you, soft and sad, as if with the weight of a priceless memory behind it.  
He bakes the pie, and the smell wafts through the house, and you resent it for smelling so good.  
You eat the pie as Steve Rogers looks on hopefully. You enjoy the taste.  
You do not remember, and you do not recall.  
You are not the other man, but Steve Rogers wants that other man, misses him so much you can see him aching.  
You understand because you were that man once, and he ached for Steve Rogers every moment of his life until he fell and broke and had it burned out of him.  
You eat the pie, and you do not remember, and you disappoint Steve Rogers.

 

6.  
Though you know Sam Wilson is not a replacement for James Buchanan Barnes, you can see that Steve loves him for all the same reasons. Because he is loyal and brave and golden and true.  
You wish you could erase your existence. The ghost of James Buchanan Barnes does not haunt the friendship between Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson. You do.  
(You resent yourself.)  
You are not bitter, but you wish you were not a ghost.  
You wish you would go back into the ice and freeze until you solidified into something more than an absence, more than a memory, more than a ghost.

 

7.  
You wake up, and you wish you were back in the ice. You are always so cold, but you never stop aching for the burn of the ice.  
You have Steve Rogers, but Steve Rogers does not have James Buchanan Barnes. You are an imposter.  
You wake up, and you wish you were back in the ice where you could cease to exist until the next time you had to be taken back out again. You do not wish Steve Rogers would wipe you, but it would be so much easier if he did.

You open your eyes, and you are not James Buchanan Barnes. You go with Steve Rogers to search for him, but he slips through your fingers like a fistful of sand. For years and years while you slept under ice, you chased Steve Rogers through your dreams, always half a step behind. Now, you are not longer in the ice, but you are still cold and frozen and when you sleep, and you chase the ghost of Bucky Barnes, even though there is no one for you to chase.  
You cannot find him, because he has been excised from you with scalpels and lightening, and all you are is his absence.

 

8.  
No one sees you.

You search for James Buchanan Barnes and you do not find him.  
Everyone else is searching for James Buchanan Barnes’s ghost too, but they do not find him either.

Who are you?  
Who are you allowed to be?  
You do not know.  
You haunt, because you are what is left behind.  
You are not that other man. You are not his killer.  
You are his grave, his burial site.  
And his is a ghost that lingers.

**Author's Note:**

> This was probably the fastest I've written a fic in a long while. I got it all out in one sitting and typed it up and posted it within an hour. Since it's so short and it kind of tumbled out so smooth I figured I might as well post it, instead of letting it languish on my hard drive like every other attempt at this type of fic that I've made.  
> Say hi to me at sadtrashbuckybarnes on tumblr


End file.
